


different definitions of good

by preromantics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Stiles has a fishy sort of excuse for not getting in a boat on the ocean. <i>"Maybe I'm not really into the idea of getting caught by the coast guard on a stolen boat," Stiles says. Which, while not the reason Stiles definitely needs to stay behind, is also a pretty valid reason.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	different definitions of good

**Author's Note:**

> December AU Advent fic, day one! One for each day until the 24th, hopefully. Most will go up on AO3, but I haven't set myself a word minimum, so smaller ones might end up over on [my tumblr](http://peachbows.tumblr.com) with an advent-specific tag!
> 
> The summary is very punny, I think. ;)

Stiles does not feel so good about this day so far. To start, all the driving to the coast with four werewolves in his jeep hadn’t really been much of a picnic or even close to a bonding experience, and he’d gotten up at dawn, which was never a good thing.

Now, the marina. Stiles, logically, knew the lead they were researching led to this. He just hoped he’d have figured out a good reason to not go out on the water on the really long drive here, instead of using all his brainpower up earlier in the day to go back and forth with Scott and Erica listing as many things in a category as they could without repeating. (Stiles was boss at the vegetable and movie title and circumcised celebrities categories, the latter of which Boyd fact-checked on his phone while Erica complained about unfair category choice. He kicked ass at countries, too, but that one wasn’t really a contest to begin with.)  
  
"Yeah," Stiles says, from the far end of the dock. "Not happening."  
  
Derek and Boyd have already jumped into the farthest boat, with Erica right behind. Scott pauses and turns to look at Stiles, confusion all over his face.  
  
"I'll just stay here and keep watch," Stiles says. He leans against a pole as smoothly as possible, only to look down a moment later and notice it’s covered in bird shit, not actually painted white. He pushes himself off much less smoothly and tucks his hands in his pockets. "It'll be great."  
  
Scott frowns at him, one foot on the dock and the other on the boat. "I didn’t think we needed anyone to keep watch."  
  
"Get in the boat, Stiles," Derek says, not even looking up from where he's hot wiring the boat’s engine. It’s a little fishing boat with a motor and two vinyl covered benches, one in the middle and one at the bow, nothing fancy.   
  
"Afraid of the ocean?" Erica asks, her voice pitched up.  
  
"Dude," Scott says, "you were just telling me how much you wanted to take your dad out to the beach house you used to go to with your mom and rent a boat."  
  
"Hey," Stiles says, sharp, because is anything sacred to Scott anymore? Last week he told Isaac Stiles' story about the first time he jerked off. (Which is, admittedly, a hilarious story. Just not one Stiles particularly wants everyone to know. Especially Isaac, who is the worst sneaky gossip Stiles knows. Jackson gave Stiles a bouquet of bananas wrapped in ribbon at school on Friday during lunch with a smirk.)  
  
"I'm not afraid of the ocean," Stiles adds. “Or boats.”  
  
"Then get in the boat," Derek repeats.  
  
"You can swim, right?" Boyd asks.  
  
"He can swim," Derek says, just as Stiles opens his mouth to say the same.   
  
Stiles makes a face at Derek. He hopes it conveys something like:  _Yeah, you should know, I held your heavy ass up for two hours once in a pool._  
  
"Maybe I'm not really into the idea of getting caught by the coast guard on a stolen boat," Stiles says. Which, while not the reason Stiles definitely needs to stay behind, is also a pretty valid reason. He's pretty sure he's sailed way past his third strike today with his dad's new ground rules for Stiles' current lifestyle or whatever but he'd rather not exacerbate it and end up grounded until the end of his senior year.  
  
Derek gets the boat to start a second later, the engine sputtering loudly into life. Scott gets dangerously close to doing a painful looking split when the boat slides away from the dock a little more, only a foot of tied rope keeping it close.  
  
"Someone needs to keep watch," Stiles says. "It's fine."  
  
"Fine," Derek says, sarcasm dryly filtering through. "Stiles, get in the boat. Erica and Boyd, get out, keep watch, see if you can get into the actual marina."  
  
Which is an even worse plan. They don’t need anyone keeping watch, really, unless it was to make sure the coast is clear when they go to return their stolen boat. The marina rents boats Mon-Sat, but Derek didn’t seem to care much either way about the legal option for exploring the island sandbar a few miles out. They're wasting time against the tide, though, and Stiles knows he's pretty necessary to this little trip and it sucks because he has absolutely no idea how to explain to anyone why it's a capital-B-bad idea for Stiles to be in a boat on the ocean.  
  
Erica jumps out of the boat and ends up in front of Stiles before Stiles can blink. She grabs him by both strings of his hoodie and drags him to the edge of the dock.  
  
"Ow," Stiles says, unnecessarily. He shakes off her hands and jumps past Scott's awkward split into the boat before gets manhandled in.  
  
Scott follows him in and Stiles situates himself as far away from either side of the boat as he can manage.  
  
Derek is staring down at the engine he has running and the level attached with a blank look. Well, an expressive blank look, for him.  
  
"Please tell me you know how to actually drive this boat," Stiles says. “Steer? Captain? Whatever.” If he can avoid getting splashed, that would be awesome.  
  
“I think I know how,” Scott offers. “Maybe.”  
  
Derek and Stiles both say “great,” at the same time. Stiles feels like they aren’t on the same page, though, because his was definitely sarcastic and Derek just seems genuinely into not having to figure out the boat thing himself. Derek has been a little bit more relaxed lately, probably by the relaxed standards of hot-coal-walkers or something, but enough that Stiles has started to notice, and it seems like a good thing that he’s more willing to let Scott handle steering than he might have been a few months ago.   
  
“Back when -- you know, my dad, we like -- did this sailing course one summer,” Scott says.   
  
It’s actually not as horrifying as Stiles expects, once they get out of the marina and out into the water. He stays firmly in the middle of the little bench at the center of the boat, hugging himself a little to keep out of the water spray. Scott is behind him, steering with the stick part of the engine. (Stiles really needs to do some boat research for future reference, if this is going to become a thing.) Derek is standing opposite Stiles, staring out at the horizon of ocean ahead of them. Every few minutes he glances back at Stiles with an unreadable expression.   
  
“Whoa,” Scott shouts, around the halfway point of their (vaguely and rushed, if Stiles is being honest) charted course. “Dolphins!”   
  
One minute Stiles is trying not to fall asleep in the sun staring at Derek’s back as the wind and spray stick his t-shirt down against his muscles and the next Scott is jumping up from the engine, rolling the boat to the side as he tries to get a better look at some  _dolphins_ , and Stiles is being flipped into the water.   
  
It’s colder than he expects but he gets over the shock quickly enough, more focused on how his jeans are ripping in half and how he’s underwater and not really in a hurry to get back to the surface since he can breathe pretty well, even with the little bit of burn in his lungs. He can see the wakes of the boat over the surface, past him, and hear it dully in the distance, doubling back.   
  
Everything under the water has a murky blue quality that Stiles barely remembers, his perspective off. He hasn’t done this since the year after -- well, in a really long time. Beacon Hills doesn’t have any natural salt water anymore. His mom used to draw him saltwater baths when he was little and let him splash around, but now he’s too big for the tub and it just seems pointless.   
  
Stiles kicks off his jeans and boxers in a rolling motion when he realizes they’re still clinging to his hips, useless.   
  
He really, really shouldn’t have gotten in the boat. Two years ago Stiles would’ve been happy to never tell anyone about this, to go through life with his best friend not knowing, even. But then Scott went and got all werewolfy and Stiles couldn’t seem to find the right time to bring up the fact he’d also been turning a mythical creature for a while. Like: ‘hey, Scott, buddy boy, best-friend, you know how you get a little extra furry these days? I know how that is. Sometimes I get pretty scale-ified and no longer have legs. What a weird club we’re in, right?’  
  
There are some muffled and hazy noises above the surface that Stiles can make out, even though he’s distracted by inspecting his tail as the light filtering through catches on his scales and reflects over his arms. His fins are larger now, thin pale-blue membranes that stretch out from the tip of his tail and each flick of them he makes to stay beneath the surface of the water feel more powerful than he remembers. His scales are different, too, larger with flecks of gold mixed in with the blue and they trail higher now, lightly scattered over where the hair low on his belly resides when he’s fully human.   
  
It’s been so long. He’ll need air soon, need to break the surface and probably explain what’s going on but he just wants to stay underwater and swim for a minute more.   
  
The surface breaks above him just as he’s moving to swim closer to where the belly of the boat is a few yards away and Stiles almost laughs in shock when he sees Derek crashing under the water, head turning from side to side, eyes blinking and wide under the water.  
  
It’s too murky for him to see even with werewolf super senses, or whatever, so Stiles swims closer and waves when he comes into view.  
  
Derek jerks back with his whole body, mouth uncharacteristically dropping open when Stiles comes into view. Stiles laughs, bubbles of air coming out, and he rolls his eyes before flicking his tail with as much power as he can and gliding up to the surface. Derek’s head pops up a foot away from him a second later.  
  
“Hey, so,” he says, drawing it out.  
  
“Stiles! Are you okay?” Scott shouts, leaning so far over the edge of the idling boat that he looks like he’ll fall in any second.  
  
“I’m super,” Stiles shouts back.   
  
Derek opens his mouth to spit out water, keeps it open like the might say something as the bob up and down in the surf, and then closes it with a shake of his head.  
  
“I’m going to probably need help getting back in the boat,” Stiles says, cutting through the water past where Derek is floating, propelling himself entirely with his tail.  
  
Derek turns and follows him. “If I lift you can you push up with --” he trails off.  
  
“Tail?” Stiles offers.   
  
“Tail?” Scott echos from the edge of the boat.  
  
Stiles figures show is better than tell in this case and doesn’t answer him, just swims until he’s right in front of the boat and Derek swims up behind him, hands settling on Stiles’ hips, sliding up over his scales before they get to just skin (either because Derek doesn’t want to touch Stiles’ scales or because they’re slippery, Stiles doesn’t know, but it had felt really good for the few seconds Derek needed to get a grip, huh) and all at once Stiles is jumping to grab the edge of the boat as Derek pushes upwards.  
  
It’s not Stiles’ most graceful moment, but his tumble face-first into the boat bottom goes mostly ignored because Scott notices his tail and makes a hilarious gurgling noise of shock.  
  
“What happened to you?” Scott asks, jumping up immediately to peer angrily at the waves Derek is currently pulling himself out of.   
  
“Nothing happened,” Stiles says, dragging himself up onto the bench as best he can with just his arms, his tail and fins rolling sort of uselessly where his legs should be. “This is a thing. It happens in saltwater, totally not a big deal.”  
  
Scott swings back around to face him. “What, like you’re a -- a  _mermaid_?”  
  
Derek grunts as he rolls back into the boat, with only a little more grace than Stiles managed which is great.   
  
“I think I prefer merman, but that’s -- yeah. Not a ton of saltwater around us so it’s not like it had a reason to come up.”  
  
“Since when?” Scott asks.   
  
“Start the boat back up,” Derek says.  
  
Stiles looks up at him and has to immediately look away. Somewhere between Stiles falling into the water and Derek jumping in after him (which, huh, Stiles might have to think about that later, alone), Derek lost his shirt and now he’s all wet and it’s not exactly a new sight but Stiles isn’t having the most normal day so he feels kind of unprepared.  
  
“A mermaid never took a bite out of me, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Stiles says. “That’s definitely not how it works.”  
  
“Your mom,” Derek says, almost lost over the noise of the engine starting up again.   
  
Stiles nods, feeling a little heavy when he does, looking down at his tail, fins flicking. His scales are duller out of the water but still catch the light, blues and the little new flecks of gold -- his mom would’ve loved to see. He barely remembers her mer-form, driving out to spend a few days each summer at the beach with his dad, walking hours over the sand to get to the most private spot they could find so she and Stiles could swim without anyone seeing. For a while afterwards he thought it was just something he’d made up, her pale scales and long strawberry hair in the water, splashing at him with flips of her fins.   
  
“Can I have your shirt? I need to dry off,” Stiles says, suddenly cold in the wind and wishing his legs were back.   
  
"Oh my god," Scott says, sort of distantly a minute later. "It's like that movie you always made your mom rent at the video store when we were little. Splash or whatever."  
  
Derek snorts.  
  
"There's nothing wrong with a good romantic comedy," Stiles defends, patting his tail off with Derek's shirt and trying not to panic, a belated reaction. No one but his dad knows about this.  
  
"We were like, eight, dude," Scott says.  
  
Derek makes an aborted motion toward Stiles' tail before drawing back. When Stiles glances up at him he's staring with a crease between both eyebrows. "How long until you can walk?"  
  
Stiles pauses in drying up near his hip where his scales fade up into skin. "Really? That's it?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I out myself as a freakin' mermaid a few minutes ago and you just want to know how long it'll be until I can walk? It’s not like I can get out at the sandbar if it’s submerged at all, this will just happen again"  
  
Derek raises an eyebrow at him. "Thank you for trusting me with this, Stiles," he says, in a weirdly pitched and definitely sarcastic soothing voice. "I really appreciate it."  
  
Stiles rolls his eyes. Scott, steering at the engine, looks uncomfortable. Clearly the sarcasm flew right over his head, so Stiles rolls his eyes more pointedly in Scott's direction, too.  
  
"Now," Derek says, voice slipping back, "when will you be able to walk? I can see the sand."  
  
Stiles can only see a flat horizon line of water, but he's just a mermai--mer _man_ , not a werewolf of the night with spidey senses or whatever.  
  
"As soon as I dry off all the way," Stiles says. His fin flips a little off the bottom of the boat without his permission, annoyed. “I’m going to need someones boxers, though. Awkward.”  
  
-  
  
Stiles is fully dry, wearing Scott’s boxers and his own salt-crisp shirt, pale bare legs and knobby knees stretched out in front of him when they can see the marina again.  
  
"What happened?" Erica asks as soon as they knock back against the dock. She looks torn between concern and a creepy sort of delight when she looks them all over.  
  
"Why are you shirtless? Why doesn't Stiles have pants, oh my god."  
  
“We’ll have to check back on a lower tide, probably closer to the new moon,” Stiles says.   
  
“Nothing happened,” Derek says.  
  
“Stiles is a mermaid!” Scott says.  
  
“Scott, jesus. Is nothing a secret anymore?”  
  
It takes twenty minutes for Stiles to dry off enough to get his legs back again after Boyd distracts him long enough for Erica to push him off the dock and into the water. Stiles drove them all with Derek’s car still out of commission for cosmetic work after the last hunter run-in so they all have to wait before Stiles can start the drive back, which isn’t his fault at all.   
  
Scott falls asleep against the back seat window halfway through Erica’s intense questioning about Stiles’ aquatic side, which he cuts off as soon as it gets to anatomy, and she and Boyd fall asleep a half hour later.   
  
It makes for a less chaotic ride than the way there, which Stiles appreciate, sleepy from the warmth of the sun still on his skin and itching to be in his own room, alone, to figure out what’s going on inside his head. He hadn’t cared about swimming, real swimming as the other part of him, for years. The way it felt, though, just for those few minutes. He rolls his shoulders back into the seat, almost perfectly molded to him now, and shakes his head at the dark road in front of the car.   
  
“Okay?” Derek asks, quiet and short. “I can drive, if you need a break.”  
  
Stiles didn’t realize Derek was watching him. “I’m good,” he says. “My baby doesn’t handle well for anyone but me, anyway, so.”  
  
Derek breathes short through his nose, something that could be a laugh in another dimension, maybe. “Let me know if you do,” he says.  
  
Stiles drives all the way back to Beacon Hills, though, and drops Erica and Boyd at Boyd’s house. (“Hey, do you have a squirt gun or one of those plant spray bottles? I have an idea,” Erica says to Boyd as they walk up to the house, still in Stiles’ earshot, and Stiles groans.) Scott takes a few minutes to wake up when they get to his, Isaac waiting by the front door for news.   
  
“We should go to the beach this summer,” Scott says as he rolls out out of jeep, half-awake and leaning against the driver’s side window. “All of us.”  
  
Stiles flicks his forehead, a little stupidly touched by the thought. Years of thinking pre-werewolf days that Scott would freak out if he ever found out Stiles’ weird secret and here Scott is, completely cool with it. Even if all the supernatural business hadn’t happened to them both, Stiles is pretty confident now that Scott would’ve rolled with it if Stiles ever told him and that’s a pretty awesome best friend quality.   
  
“Maybe,” Derek says, before Stiles can say anything.  
  
“Cool,” Scott says.   
  
It might be nice. Maybe. There’s a few months left until summer, anyway, and everyone is just starting to get along like normal people and even now Stiles wouldn’t have thought of Derek as the summer-at-the-beach type but it’s late and the thought is -- nice.   
  
Stiles pulls back out of the McCall’s driveway once Scott and Isaac close the front door behind them and turns off the street to head out to the woods, back to Derek’s.  
  
“You can just go home,” Derek says. “I’ll get back from there.”  
  
Stiles didn’t even really think of that, but he’s already in the opposite direction from his house now, so. “It’s fine, I can drop you off. No need to go running through the woods at midnight.”  
  
“Pot, kettle,” Derek says, and Stiles snorts a little, surprised.  
  
They’re quiet for a few minutes until Stiles drives past the edge of town, the little ‘ _You are now leaving Beacon Hills_ ’ sign catching his headlights and blinding him for a second.  
  
"You always smelled a little like, you know," Derek says quietly, voice cutting through the quiet.  
  
"Eau de tuna de Stiles, how lovely," Stiles says.  
  
"No," Derek says. "Like the sea. Good."  
  
Stiles turns his head quickly to raise an eyebrow at Derek in the passenger seat. "So I smell good?"  
  
Derek's lips thin out and he looks instantly uncomfortable, so Stiles laughs at him and looks back at the road. Derek doesn’t say anything either way after a few seconds, so Stiles figures he doesn’t smell awful.  
  
“What else do I smell like?” Stiles immediately wishes he’d made it into more of a joke; he sounds a little too earnest for the space between them in the car.  
  
“You --” Derek starts, but he trails off, staring out at the road. He makes a weird little noise and Stiles looks over at him, sees his nostrils flared out.  
  
“Don’t strain yourself or anything, I wasn’t --”  
  
“You smell like Stiles,” Derek says, which is somewhat anticlimactic. “It’s mostly the sea and salt and some other things.”  
  
“Huh,” Stiles says. “But it’s a good smell, not like a stench or anything?”  
  
“No. It’s good.”  
  
“How good?” Stiles asks, turning off toward the preserve road.   
  
“Stiles,” Derek says, definitely a warning.   
  
Stiles glances over at him again and then back to the road when he swerves a bit, caught off guard by the small curve of Derek’s mouth where he’s looking out the opposite window.   
  
A few minutes later and they’re outside Derek’s house, half rebuilt and half unlivable these days, somewhat like Derek himself. Half this, half that -- easily applied to everyone Stiles cares about now, anyway, and even himself, all for different reasons.   
  
Derek doesn’t move to get out of the jeep right away and Stiles kind of wishes he could think of something to say, but his head is sort of a mess.   
  
“There are some little ponds on some of the back acres,” Derek says, one hand rubbing at his opposite shoulder. “I was thinking of selling that part of the land to the town for the preserve to expand at some point, but we could probably figure out how to get them salty enough for you. If you wanted.”  
  
Stiles stares at him, aware his mouth is half-open.   
  
“So you could have a place to swim,” Derek adds, unnecessarily.   
  
“I --” Stiles starts, but trails off.   
  
Derek shifts, fingers curling around the door handle. “I just thought --”  
  
“Yeah, no,” Stiles says, shaking his head, mostly at himself. “That would be kind of awesome, actually, I think. We’d have to figure out the PH and how to do it right and I don’t even know what level of salt I even need to change, but my mom used to just pour some Morton salt into the bathtub so I’m sure it’s not super scientific or anything. Google should know. Not the merperson part or whatever, though I guess I should also try and figure some more about that out, right? About myself.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Derek says, looking poised to jump out of the jeep when Stiles trails off.   
  
Stiles groans and drops his head to the steering wheel, turning to peer over at Derek. “Sorry, I got a little too into that.”   
  
“Good,” Derek says. “I mean, I’m glad. That you want to.”  
  
“Thank you,” Stiles says, and means it.   
  
Derek opens the door and jumps out, but turns to lean back inside. “You could come by tomorrow afternoon and we could hike out and take a look,” he says.   
  
“That would be awesome,” Stiles says, maybe a little too enthusiastically but he means that, too.   
  
“Good,” Derek says, still hovering.

“Good,” Stiles agrees. “I’ll text you.”  As an afterthought to Derek’s technological prowess or lack thereof he adds, “Charge your phone.”   
  
“I will,” Derek says. He looks like he might say even more, possibly some sort of non-emergency-related record, but he ducks back out of the jeep and straightens up after a few more seconds. “Goodnight, Stiles,” he says, and then -- confusingly -- “thanks.”  
  
He turns to walk up to the house immediately after and Stiles watches him.   
  
“Goodnight!” he calls. When Derek shuts the front door behind him Stiles sits in the driveway for another minute. “Thanks, too,” he says, quiet and to his steering wheel, but he knows Derek had to have heard him with the jeep barely making any noise in idle.   
  
Stiles kind of feels like grinning, which is stupid, and his day has been confusing at best and it’s going on way past his supernatural-related curfew but he doesn’t really care.  _Derek_  is confusing at best and Stiles still feels like grinning, this warm pressure in his throat as he starts up the jeep again.   
  
He might run a bath when he gets home, maybe grab the salt from the cupboard, and do some research on his phone while he winds down. When he gets to the end of Derek’s long driveway he lets himself grin where no one can see and he turns to drive home, feeling pretty good.


End file.
